


Situational

by predominantly_normal



Category: Wreck-It Ralph (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst with a Happy Ending, Child Abuse, Family, Feel-good, Foster Care, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 20:59:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16818343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/predominantly_normal/pseuds/predominantly_normal
Summary: Vanellope isn't a princess. She's a foster kid with ADHD and a love for all things NASCAR. Ralph isn't a video game villain. He's the head of a construction company that evicts people to build shopping centers. There's no arcade, no medal, no "going Turbo". But Vanellope and Ralph find one another anyways. They always do. [Human!AU] [Oneshot]





	Situational

**Author's Note:**

> So, I got to see Ralph Breaks the Internet over Thanksgiving Break, and despite the mixed reviews, I really loved it! It brought me back to the first movie, which inspired me to write this monster of a oneshot fic. I wanted it to parallel a lot of the moments from the original movie, but I wanted it to still be a separate story that could exist on its own. Hope you enjoy it! 
> 
> CONTENT WARNINGS FOR:  
> -Child Abuse/Neglect  
> -Depictions of ADHD and Dyslexia  
> -Some minor swearing  
> -Blood/Minor Injury  
> -Mentions of Alcohol

Vanellope doesn’t mind her situation.

That’s what the grown-ups like to call it. A situation. And they sort of say it with this big look of uncomfortable pity slapped on their faces, like, _“that girl’s parents… well, it’s a situation.”_

Vanellope thinks they’re trying to talk in code. Like she wouldn’t know what they mean when they call her orphan status a situation. As if they’re afraid that she’ll spontaneously burst out into hysterics if someone so much as mentions the words “parents” or “family” or “dead”.

Joke’s on them, though, because Vanellope doesn’t care.

In fact, she’s probably better off than half of the kids in her foster home, because unlike them, she didn’t even get to know her parents. And you can’t miss something that you never even had in the first place.

If anything, they should call Taffyta a situation. She cries fifteen minutes past bedtime every night just because she misses her mommy and daddy.

Rancis is always the first of them all to comfort her. Then Jubileena. Sometimes Candlehead, too (there were three Sarah’s in the foster home. Nicknames had become a staple).

Vanellope can’t be bothered.

She really wants to tell Taffyta to shut her mouth some nights, but her foster mom has told her time and time again to mind her manners. And Vanellope would rather not get on her foster mom’s bad side, because getting on her bad side means punishments. Like having to go to bed thirty minutes early, or not being allowed to play outside, or having her Hot Wheels taken away.

Or worse, her dinner.

Vanellope’s foster parents don’t really like her that much. She has the sneaking suspicion that of all the kids they house, she’s the one that they’re most eager to get rid of. They don’t like how she’s always running around like she just drank an entire can of Coca Cola, or how she can’t focus on anything for more than a solid minute, or how she can talk on and on at one-thousand miles per hour and never get tired. They tried locking up the snack cabinets and cutting desserts and sugar out of her diet, but apparently it isn’t the sugar’s fault that Vanellope is the way she is.

The school nurse says that Vanellope probably has something called ADHD, which means that the problem is in her brain. And not eating sugar isn’t going to fix her brain. So, she doesn’t even bother with trying to be good about what she puts into her excitable little nine-year-old body anymore.

Sometimes Rancis ‘forgets’ to lock up the box where he keeps his stash of old Halloween candy, and Vanellope is allowed to snag a Twizzler or two. He usually doesn’t, though, unless Vanellope got in trouble earlier that day and got sent to the room without food.

He’s the only one of the foster kids who seems to take pity on Vanellope. Mostly, everyone’s just angry at her. It’s because her ADHD gets ahold of her whenever prospective families come in willing to adopt, and she can’t help but annoy and overwhelm them until they tell her foster mom that they’ll “think about it” and go somewhere else.

Vanellope can’t help that she drives people away. It’s not her fault that every nice pair of parents wants an equally nice kid to take home.

She had been so good this last time, too. She had started talking it up with the nice young couple that had walked in, but she had been careful not to overdo it. She hadn’t begged them to go and check out her scab collection, or play demolition derby with her Hot Wheels. She hadn’t even done anything ‘unladylike’ (i.e., belching, farting, anything actually fun).

Unfortunately, the other kids weren’t willing to take any risks.

While the couple went into their foster dad’s office to discuss the adoption process, Taffyta and Snowanna had gone and locked Vanellope in the utility room where they kept the washer and dryer. Vanellope had tried to yell and bang on the door, but Snowanna had turned both appliances on, and the rickety old things effectively muffled out any noise that Vanellope tried to make.

Taffyta had gotten adopted that afternoon.

And Vanellope had been left in the utility room until late at night, when her foster mom had come in to do the day’s laundry. She had gotten a stern yelling-at, because none of the kids were allowed to be in the utility room (even though wasn’t anything in there other than a few milk crates full of old paperwork from the kids their foster parents had taken care of in the past), and was sent promptly up to her room with an empty stomach.

She had counted on Rancis giving her a Milky Way or something to tide her over until breakfast, but when she padded into the room, everyone had stayed up to wait for her.

“You took long enough,” Taffyta says, smirking.

Vanellope wants so badly to smack that nasty grin into the next week. Instead, she just puts her head down and shoves her hands into her hoodie pockets.

Taffyta continues on despite her lack of response. “You missed my big day. I got adopted, you know.”

“Hurrah for you,” Vanellope deadpans.

“Yeah, and my new mommy is like, awesome. She’s a fashion model.”

“You’re such a liar.”

“Am not, spaz.”

“I’m not a spaz.”

Taffyta puts a big, cruel smile on her face. She hops off of her bed and circles Vanellope like a shark. “I’m not trying the bad guy here, Vanellope. I’m just saying that this is the first set of parents in the past three months that actually wanted to adopt one of us. Do you know why?”

Vanellope stays quiet. She already knows what Taffyta is going to say, and there’s no point in fighting it.

“It’s because you weren’t around to spaz up the place. Isn’t that right, Rancis?”

Rancis’ eyes are sad and torn, but apparently his fear of Taffyta overrides his sympathy for Vanellope, because he only turns away and nods. “That’s right.”

Taffyta laughs. Her laugh is buoyant and happy and musical. Vanellope can’t stand it.

“You know, I bet it would be better for all of us if you just left,” Taffyta sneers. “I mean, there’s no point in you staying around anyways. Nobody’s going to want to adopt a kid like you.”

“Shut up!” Vanellope yells, shoving Taffyta as hard as she can. “Someone’s going to adopt me, and they’re gonna be way better than your new fashion model mom.”

Taffyta is crying before she even hits the ground. She wipes her eyes and her chest hitches. “Fine,” Taffyta snarls. “Maybe someone will adopt you. Let’s picture it. Pretend I’m you, and I just got adopted by some awesome parents, and I’m actually having a pretty good time at my new home, when suddenly- BAM! My parents realize I’m a spazzy little freak and they end up sending me right back where I came from.”

“They- they wouldn’t do that,” Vanellope says, though she doesn’t even believe herself.

“Of course, they would. Because you ruin things, Vanellope. And you’re going to spend your entire life in the system,” Taffyta says. She twirls her hair around her fingers. “You know, if I were you, I’d call it quits and pack my bag right now. At least that way, you won’t be getting in the way of someone else getting adopted.”

Vanellope turns to the other foster kids, desperate for any motion of support. All she gets is twelve sets of eyes that do nothing but try their best to avoid hers.

“Come on, guys,” Vanellope asks, and it sounds so much like she’s begging for validation that it makes her sick, “You don’t really think that, do you?”

“I don’t know, Vanellope. I mean, Taffyta did get adopted today because you weren’t, you know, around,” Jubileena says. A few kids murmur in their agreement.

“It would be nice to get adopted,” Rancis adds.

Vanellope’s heart breaks a little at the rejection from her friend (friend? Was Rancis her friend? Or was he just an acquaintance who felt bad for her sometimes?), but she forces herself to keep a straight face despite the sting.

“Seriously? So, it would just be better for everyone if I ran away then, huh?” Vanellope asks. She’s angry, but behind that, all she wants is for someone to say “no”.

Nobody does. Taffyta smirks victoriously.

“Fine!” Vanellope shouts. “I don’t need any of you anyways!”

She marches over to her bed and grabs her bookbag, emptying out all of her school supplies save for a few glitter pens. She stuffs the bag like she’s packing up to get ready for a new home. Fills it with her toothbrush, a few hair-ties, a select few of her favorite Hot Wheels cars, and a blanket.

The kids watch her as she packs. Some even help her gather up the things she might’ve forgotten otherwise, like her hairbrush and an extra pair of socks.

Rancis helps her sneak into the upstairs bathroom, where the fire escape stairs are propped up against the window.

He leaves the room a lot at night to go to the bathroom, even though they’re not supposed to get up past their bedtime, so he knows which of the floorboards are squeaky and which are quiet.

As he helps her climb out, he passes her two full-sized Snickers bars.

Vanellope looks at them with wide eyes. “Rancis!” she whisper-yells. “You said you were gonna save these for something special.”

“I know,” Rancis says. “Look, Vanellope, I’m really sorry.”

Vanellope sighs. “It’s okay. I hate to admit it, but Taffyta’s probably right. I mean, let’s look on the bright side here, right? With me gone, maybe you’ll get adopted next.”

Rancis smiles sadly at her, “Maybe.”

With that, she says one last goodbye, and pockets the candy before hopping out the bathroom window. She falls with a _clang_ onto the fire escape stairs below.

Thankfully, it’s early autumn, so it’s not too cold out yet. As she gets her bearings, Vanellope hears the bathroom window sliding shut. And finally, she’s all alone.

Her stomach rumbles. She unwraps one of Rancis’ Snickers bars and takes a bite.

Now, she thinks, now she is in a situation.

***

Ralph is good at his job. Doesn’t mean he cares for it, though.

He’s been working it since he was nineteen. He’s thirty-four now, so his seniority gives him good pay and good benefits. He’s built up quite the bank of vacation days, too (he’s only ever used up two of them in his life. He doesn’t have many reasons to cut work).

He’s a government construction worker- specifically in the excavation department. He wrecks the old apartments in the ugly, lower-class parts of the city so that another crew can build shopping plazas and Whole Foods markets in their place. It’s all gentrification at work, but as long as it pays the bills, Ralph can’t bring himself to care.

It does get rough when the people he displaces complain to him, but there’s really nothing he can do about it. The city wants to build a new Walmart on seventh, and so a few old brick apartments have to come down. That’s just how life is in the big city. Always changing- for better or for worse.

Felix is the guy that people like. He manages the crew that builds the new infrastructures, and he also holds counseling appointments with the freshly homeless ex-residents. He helps them fill out their government grants, and he recommends new housing for them. He helps them put their lives back together after Ralph tears them apart.

Ralph isn’t too bitter about the entire situation. That’s just how things are. He’s the bad guy. And he always will be, until he retires, quits, or dies.

Unfortunately, people don’t always accept that as an excuse.

He’s handing an eviction notice to a middle-aged man. The man’s name is Gene, and the building he lives in doubles as a hole-in-the-wall café.

“You can’t just kick me out! Who do you think you are?” Gene snaps.

“Look, it’s not my call, buddy. I promise, you’ll get compensated for your trouble,” Ralph says.

That’s his signature line by now. If you stuck a string in his back and pulled it, that’s probably the phrase he’d spew out.

“Don’t you call me ‘buddy’. I’m not your friend,” Gene snaps. “And I’m not leaving. This is my great-grandfather’s store, you know. I’m not just going to hand it over for some filthy government pocket change.”

Ralph sighs. He hates it when they put up a fight.

“Fine. Then let me tell you what’s going to happen,” Ralph says. He feels like he’s trying to explain economics to a toddler. “What’s going to happen is that I’m going to go over to your neighbors there, and I’m going to give them the same offer I made to you. They’ll all say yes. And the city is going to build a bunch of big corporate companies right here in these lots. And your taxes are going to skyrocket so damn badly, you’ll be bankrupt within the year.”

It takes Gene a moment to roll his options over in his head. But just like everyone else does, he folds like a bad hand of cards in a game of poker, and accepts Ralph’s offer. He does this without much further protest, but apparently, he can’t resist spitting right in Ralph’s face and calling him a few unsightly names before the transaction is over.

Ralph heads to Tapper’s after his shift.

He never gets drunk anymore, but he finds that it’s nice to just be somewhere familiar and have a short, casual conversation with someone who doesn’t hate him.

Tapper’s is in another sketchy part of town, right next to the city square. Ralph’s biggest fear is that he might one day have to give the same papers to Tapper that he did to Gene.

But he puts that out of his mind for a drink. After he’s finished, he’ll go back to his trailer-park house, heat up some leftover spaghetti, and call it quits for the night.

And then he’ll wake up in the morning, and do it all over again.

***

Vanellope has no trouble with surviving on her own at first.

She’s old enough to be wary of strangers, and she mostly keeps her head down as she navigates the big city. Stays in big, well-lit areas where all the tourists hang out. She manages to scrounge up a dollar-fifty at a subway station by hitting the refund button on every vending machine she finds in the nearby radius, and she uncovers a sack of pennies that Jubileena must’ve snuck into the front pocket of her bookbag.

Jubileena must have been hiding them from their foster mom for ages. They were never allowed to save money- not even this dollar thirty-seven in pennies.

Vanellope sleeps her first night under a few trees in the park, and thanks the stars that it doesn’t rain. When she wakes up around noon, she has enough money for a Sprite and a hotdog from a local vendor. And then she’s on her own.

She should be a lot more worried than she is.

And though the nagging question of what she’s going to eat for dinner keeps popping up in her head, her hyperactive brain doesn’t let her dwell on it for long.

Instead, she explores the city. It’s busy- constantly moving, and full of lights and sounds.

She remembers when she was taken to the city a year or two ago with another set of foster parents. They had taken her to this very spot in the square, and all Vanellope can remember is that she’d had a meltdown because the overstimulation of noise and color had just been way too much for her. She had ended up biting someone in a panic, and like that- she had been moved to a different house the week after.

Just one of the many joys of being her.

Vanellope feels kind of like she’s going to puke right now, but she takes a deep breath and reminds herself that she’s not an sensitive little kid anymore. She’s nine years old, and she can handle herself. She just has to find a way to get a few bucks so that she doesn’t have to stave off her hunger with Rancis’ other Snickers bar.

It doesn’t take long for her to get an idea. She sees him on the streets- a homeless older man with a torn-up parka and a cardboard sign. Vanellope had seen people like him begging for money when she’d gone out with her other foster parents. They’d pulled her aside and told her that people like that were dangerous, and never to go by them.

Vanellope puts their warning at the back of her mind as she skips up to the man. He’s kind enough to rip off part of his board, and she uses her gel pens to draw big dollar signs on the front.

“Come stay by me, girl,” the man says. “We’ll get more money if people think we’re a pair.”

Without any other option, Vanellope agrees. She doesn’t look nearly as worn as the older man, but her old teal hoodie was a hand-me-down from three years ago that she just started fitting into, and her hair’s a rat’s nest. More people than she can count drop coins in their jar as the afternoon sun turns into an evening overcast.

It’s satisfying to see the little glass mason jar fill up, but after a few hours, Vanellope is tired of hanging around the square with her cardboard sign trying to strike up conversations with the busy people walking past. She’s bored, and this isn’t much fun. Plus, she’s pretty sure she saw someone throw in a whole entire twenty-dollar bill into the jar. That’s more than enough to get some dinner for the night.

“Can I have my money now?” she asks the homeless guy, letting her sign fall to her ankles.

The man lifts an eyebrow. “We’re makin’ a racket. Why stop?”

“I’m tired and I wanna do something else,” Vanellope says. “And you smell bad.”

The beggar seems to stiffen his lip. “Fine. Sure, kid. I uh- I don’t ‘member how much we made, so I’m just goin’ to give you what I think is half. Sound fair?”

“Okay.”

The man parses through his jar of cash before pulling out seven bucks. “Here, girl.”

Vanellope furrows her brow. “Hey, that’s not half! Look at that thing. It’s loaded with cash!”

“I-I earned that before you showed up. I been here all day, you know. Look, kid, do you want your seven bucks or what?”

“Liar, liar!” Vanellope hollers. A few people walking past stop to raise a brow and whisper. The beggar nervously waves them away. “You’re lying to me!”

“Good lord, keep your voice down!” the man hisses. “People are startin’ to stare!”

Vanellope looks the old, homeless man right in the eyes. And then she screams.

It’s an ugly, brutal cry that makes people stop right in their tracks. It doesn’t help that she keeps screaming things like, “You said you’d give me candy! Where are my parents?”

The man silences her instantly, slapping a hand over her mouth and yanking her close.

“Alright, brat. You win. Ten.”

Vanellope twists up her face. “Fifteen.”

“I’m not bartering with a kid.”

“Well, I want more than ten dollars. I can always scream more-,”

“Okay, okay! Christ, kid. Can we settle on twelve?”

Vanellope smiles brightly, shoving away from the man’s grip. She snatches the seven dollars out of his hand, plus an extra five from the jar. “Twelve sounds just right, mister.”

***

Ralph is about to leave Tapper’s when he notices a girl walk in.

He catches a few raised eyebrows. Tapper’s is not an establishment catered to children, after all. The only things he imagines this kid might be able to buy would be root beer and pub pretzels. But she’s drenched to the bone and shivering, so nobody really has it in them to object to her presence.

The little girl clambers onto a barstool a few away from Ralph. Tapper finishes topping off some young guy’s beer before walking over to meet her.

“Little miss, you have parents around?”

The girl makes a big show of looking around. “Oh, shoot. Lost ‘em again. Can I have a Sprite?”

Tapper shakes his head. “I’m sorry, sweetie, but you’re not allowed to be unattended here. No minors allowed without a guardian. Pub rules.”

“But it’s raining outside, and I already got kicked out of the only other store on this dumb street!” the girl exclaims. She quickly recomposes herself and adjusts herself so that she can sit on her calves. She smacks a handful of crumbled bills and coins on the bar counter. “How about I cut you a deal?”

Tapper sighs and pushes the money back.

“Can’t do. Look, kiddo, it’s nothing personal- this place just ain’t fit for kids. There’s a McDonald’s a block over if you want to run there.”

The girl seems to consider the man’s suggestion. But then, as if the world couldn’t be more damning, a strike of thunder rattles the universe. The little girl shrieks, nearly falling off her chair and shivering long after the thunder has passed. She scrambles over a few stools until she’s right next to Ralph.

“O-oh, what do you know? It’s my uncle!”

Tapper looks unimpressed. “He’s your uncle?”

“Yeah! My uncle… uh…”

Ralph knows that Tapper doesn’t believe her for a moment. But he’s sick and tired of being the bad guy, and he’s sick and tired of getting innocent people kicked out into the rain. So maybe it’s just because he wants to do something that’ll make someone smile for once, but he feigns shock as if he had somehow missed the girl walking in.

“Oh my- I didn’t even see you come in, kid!” Ralph exclaims. “Man, it’s been a while since I’ve seen you. Did you miss your uh- your uncle Ralph?”

The girl brightens up, all the hope coming back to her face in an instant. “You bet!”

Tapper still looks entirely unconvinced, but he decides against pushing the issue any further. He just rolls his eyes and takes the girl’s order with a groan.

The girl smirks back at him in return, pushing her money back over the counter. “A Sprite, please.”

***

Vanellope is beyond glad that Ralph covered for her.

Thunderstorms had always been problematic for her- the sudden loud noises triggered a panic response every time. When she was younger, whatever foster parents she had would try to comfort her by reading her stories, or putting on a television, or bringing her noise-cancelling headphones.

Of course, as soon as she arrived at her last house, she was too old to be ‘coddled’. So, when thunder shook the entire sky at night, Vanellope just had to make do with curling up in her blankets and jamming her fingers into her ears.

Ralph doesn’t seem to want to talk her much, but he does buy her a basket of chicken strips. Vanellope tries to strike up a few conversations with him as she eats, but he brushes off each one with little more than a dismissive grunt.

“So, what kind of old man name is Ralph?”

“You look like a lumberjack. Are you a lumberjack?”

“Why’s your breath so bad?”

Eventually, Ralph gets fed up with her.

“How about I ask you something? Huh?” he snaps.

Vanellope sits nicely and clasps her hands over her lap. “Sure thing, stink-breath.”

Ralph twists up his face at the insult. He jabs her in the chest with his finger. “Where are your parents?”

“Oh, them! Right… they’re… they’re not around right now,” Vanellope winces.

Ralph rolls his eyes. “Fine. Then do you have somewhere you’re supposed to be?”

Vanellope bites the inside of her cheek. No, she thinks, and that’s kind of her problem right now. She knows that the rain isn’t going to let up until late, according to something she overheard in the liquor store before she got kicked out for being too young to buy anything.

She had planned to sleep in the park again, but she knows that even the bigger trees won’t shield her completely from the rain. And then there’s the thunder to worry about on top of that…

Vanellope doesn’t realize that she’s verbalizing this train of thought until she notices the expression on Ralph’s face. She wants to kick herself- it’s not her fault that she thinks out loud. It’s just the only way she can wrangle her thoughts into any sensible order long enough to comprehend them.

“You were going to sleep where?” Ralph asks, shocked. “That’s crazy-talk, kid. It’s pouring out there!”

“No duh,” Vanellope snaps back. But what other choice do I got?”

Ralph sighs. “Look, kid, Tapper’s going to be pretty suspicious if you don’t leave the bar with me, since I’m apparently your uncle. Do you just want to stay on my couch for the night? It’s nothing great, but it’ll keep you warm and dry, at least.”

Vanellope knows that she should say no. She should start screaming, “stranger danger!” and hightail it over to the McDonald’s that the bartender had told her about. But it’s still thundering hard outside, and other than a greasy fast-food joint, there’s nowhere else for her to go. And Ralph seems nice enough.

So instead of declining his offer like she should, Vanellope just nods and looks up at him with a sweet grin, “You’d really do that?”

“Sure, kid,” Ralph says.

He’s wearing an expression that she can’t quite read, but her concern is quickly pushed to the back of her mind. All that she cares about right now is that she has a place to sleep for the night.

“So, Ralph, does your house smell like your breath? ‘Cause if it does, I think we’re gonna need to pick up some mints first.”

“Don’t push it.”

***

Ralph should have cleaned.

It’s almost comical that he’s embarrassed about the state of his home when the only person he has to impress is a desperate, overactive little kid. But she’s the only person he’s had in his home for years, and he almost feels ashamed leading her into his little mobile home. He has more than enough savings to get a real apartment in the city, but he’s never found a reason to leave the house he’s always known. His practicality is biting him in the ass, now.

But whatever anxiety he has about his living arrangements is instantly dashed the moment Vanellope starts racing around.

“This is awesome! You get to live here?”

Ralph grins sheepishly. “You bet. Home sweet home, right?”

“It’s amazing! It’s got wrappers all over the floor, and a dead moth in the ceiling lamp and everything!”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah! I’ve never seen anything like it!”

Ralph supposes that his house would be pretty interesting to someone who’s never seen an adult forget to clean up. He points Vanellope in the direction of the couch and lets her use the TV as long as she keeps the volume low. She’s more than happy to turn on SNL and listen to the older people cuss as she curls up on the couch in her damp clothes.

“You’re still soaked,” Ralph says, trying to seem casual around the strange child in his house. He hasn’t talked to a kid since he was one himself. He’s never had a younger sibling. He doesn’t know the first thing about taking care of a child. “You got uh- you got any PJ’s in that bag of yours?”

Vanellope tilts her head, “I think I have some socks.”

Ralph rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. “Okay, well, uh, change into those. If you want, I can give you an old shirt to wear to bed while I throw your wet stuff in the dryer.”

***

Vanellope wouldn’t normally agree (Ralph has already done so much for her, after all) but she sneezes right as she’s about to decline, and she suddenly remembers the time she got yelled at for playing out in the rain because she could’ve gotten sick.

That’s how she ends up wearing a men’s XXL shirt that could very well double as a dress on her.

She hears Ralph in the back room of his trailer home throwing her clothes in the dryer, and manages to fall asleep to an Alec Baldwin skit.

She’s a light sleeper, so the sound of some rustling manages to wake her not long after. When she cracks her eyes open, Ralph is just tucking her clothes away into her backpack. Vanellope figures that he’ll want her gone by the morning.

Honestly, she’s okay with that. He’s been nicer to her than anyone has been in the past while, and if all she can manage to get out of him is one night under a warm roof- that’s all she needs.

***

There’s not much in Vanellope’s bag that betrays where she came from.

There’s a candy bar wrapper, a few toys, a pink, sparkly toothbrush, and some other random odds and ends. What there isn’t is any useful information: there’s no address, no phone numbers- not even a last name.

Ralph is desperate. Clueless and concerned, he ends up calling Felix. It’s odd, because he hasn’t talked casually with his co-worker in at least a good few months. But he doesn’t know what else to do, and he needs help.

The phone rings three times, but Ralph doesn’t worry about being sent to voicemail. Felix is the kind of guy who never misses a call. And true to Ralph’s expectations, Felix answers by the fourth and final ring. He’s groggy and it’s clear by his voice that he was woken up.

“Hey there, pal,” Felix yawns into the receiver. “What can I do ya for?”

“Uh, hey, Felix,” Ralph says. He sounds awkward, and it makes him self-conscious, but he’s determined to stick this one through. “Funny I called you so early in the morning, huh?”

“Two in the morning certainly is an early time to catch up with an old friend,” Felix says. He’s so polite, even when he’s speaking through his teeth.

“Look, I need your help. There’s this- this kid sleeping on my couch and-,”

“Wait- what?”

Felix definitely isn’t asleep anymore.

Ralph chuckles awkwardly in order to give himself enough time to gather his thoughts. “You know, it’s a funny story, actually. See, I met this little girl at Tapper’s and-,”

He doesn’t get to finish his story, or even really start it, before Felix interrupts him.

“Oh boy. Ralph, do you mind if I swing by so you can tell this to me in person?”

***

When Vanellope wakes up, it’s to Ralph talking in the dining space behind her with someone else. The other person’s voice is male, but not at all deep like Ralph’s.

“… Shoot, I just don’t know. You certainly can’t keep her if that’s what you’re trying to do.”

“I don’t want to keep her,” Ralph insists back. “I just- I dunno, I feel bad for her, y’know? She doesn’t seem like she comes from the best place, Felix.”

Felix. So that’s the other guy’s name.

Felix speaks up. “Well, did you talk to her about it?”

Vanellope can’t sit still and pretend to sleep any longer. She jumps up on the couch and leans her arms on the headrest. “Talk to me about what?”

Ralph and Felix look at one another simultaneously, as if both silently begging the other person to speak up first. Neither of the two adults look like they’ve slept all night. Then, Felix turns to her and laughs, twisting his hands together.

“Hey, kiddo. You must be Vanellope,” Felix says. “I heard you had a rough night.”

“Rough? Where’d you hear that? I had the best night of my life!” Vanellope says with a wide grin. “I got to watch TV past late, and I didn’t have to share it with anyone.”

Felix bites his lip. “Right. That does sound awful fun, huh?”

“Yep! So, what were you and Ralph talking about?”

“Well,” Felix says, motioning with his hands to move his mouth along, “We were wondering about you and maybe where your parents might be?”

He says it like it’s a question that Vanellope is supposed to answer. Vanellope wishes she could answer it. Shoot, she wishes that she could ask it herself. She wishes she could just go up to someone and ask, “do you know where my parents are?” and have them reply with something like, “yeah, you just missed them. They went that way.”

But instead, Vanellope just shrugs.

“Did you lose them in the city?” Felix asks.

“Do I look like I would just lose my parents?” Vanellope shoots back.

“My apologies for assuming, miss. We just want to help you here- that’s all. And, well, they’ve got to be somewhere, so if you just told us, this could go an awful lot faster.” He gestures his hand in circles, prodding for a response.

Vanellope picks at the lint pills on the couch. “It wouldn’t matter even if I did know where they were,” she says after a moment of silence.

She’s well aware of how coy she’s being about this, but she knows that she won’t be able to stand it when Ralph and Felix start looking sorry for her and start calling her a situation just like every other person who knows about her parents has.

“Kid, you have to tell us where your parents are so that we can help you.”

Ralph locks eyes with her. His face is stern and angry, but Vanellope can see the softness buried behind it.

Vanellope pouts. “Fine. On one condition.”

“Well sure, little miss,” Felix says. “What is it?”

“You guys can’t look all sad when I tell you, okay?”

Ralph and Felix glance at one another for a second time, but eventually they seem to come to the consensus that Vanellope’s condition isn’t undoable.

“Alright,” Ralph says. “We won’t. Now, where are they?”

Vanellope doesn’t mean to, but she ends up laughing a bit out of awkwardness. “See, the funny thing about it is, um, well, my parents are kind of… dead.”

***

Felix butts in right away, “Oh, dear, I’m so sorry!”

Ralph wants to smack him, but Vanellope beats him to the point.

“Oh, come on! You promised that you wouldn’t be sad when I told you. Look, if it makes you feel any better, they’ve been dead my entire life, so it’s not like I was old enough to know them or anything. I don’t care. I-I mean, I do care. It would be great if they weren’t, you know, dead, but they are. So, there’s just no point in being upset over it. Okay?”

Felix and Ralph don’t know what to say for a long time. Ralph had figured that something serious was up with the kid’s parents, but he didn’t want to believe himself when the possibility that they might’ve been… deceased popped up in his mind.

It’s not like he doesn’t know where she’s coming from. His parents had kicked the bucket before he could legally drink. But it’s different when it’s someone else, and he just doesn’t know what to do.

His plan for the day had initially involved getting her out of his house by noon so that he could go to work and resume his life as it had always been- but apparently that isn’t in the cards for him. He supposes that it’s not so bad- at least he’s finally going to have a use for his vacation days.

Finally, Felix gets the nerve to talk again. “Do you have anywhere to go?”

***

_“Do you have anywhere to go?”_

Vanellope can’t imagine returning to her foster home.

She bets that if she returned right now, her foster mom would greet her back with a strict ban from the next weeks’ worth of dinners. And she probably wouldn’t even have anything to fill her stomach with at night, because without her and her ADHD brain around to screw things up, Rancis has probably already been adopted. Her toys would probably be taken away, too. Maybe even her pillows and blankets.

Her foster mom had only ever confiscated her bedding once, and it was because she had done something really bad (she had stolen five dollars right out of her foster mom’s purse to buy something from an ice-cream truck).

But this was so much worse.

She had run away.

The reality of it was finally beginning to dawn on her.

Shakily, she replies.

***

“No,” Vanellope says, her voice quavering. “I don’t.”

“Oh, gosh. Quite the twist we’re in, huh?” Felix mutters.

Ralph frowns. There are four options he’s considering right now.

Option A: He can take her to the police station, and let them take care of her. Pros: it’ll only be slight interference to his status-quo, and he can probably even make it to work afterwards for a half-day. Cons: he doesn’t know what the police are going to do with her once she’s there, and for some reason, that upsets him.

Option B: He can put her back out into the world on her own. Pros: ??? Cons: he would never be able to clear his conscience if he left a nine-year-old girl to wander the city alone.

Option C: He can try to find wherever she came from and send her back there. Despite what she says, she has to have come from somewhere. Pros: he’ll know for sure that she’s going right back where she came from. Cons: he doesn’t want to jump the gun, but he has a sinking feeling that the place she came from isn’t a good one (why would she run away otherwise?).

And finally, Option D: He can let her live with him for a few more days while he figures everything out. This option’s tricky. Pros: he’ll know for sure that she’s in good care, at least for a while. It’ll also give him some time to potentially come up with a better plan. Cons: the implications and legal ramifications should someone find out that he’s keeping a strange little girl in his house aren’t pretty. Nor is he sure that there is a better plan out there.

Ralph looks Vanellope in the eyes, and he can see so much uncertainty in them. He watches as they flicker back and forth from him, to her things, to the front door. He suspects that she’ll try and make a run for it if he says anything that she might consider as even slightly threatening.

So, he just sucks in his lips and says, “How about you live here for a few days? Then we can work it out from here.”

“Ralph!” Felix hisses, smacking Ralph’s arm. “What are you doing?”

“What? You want me to just leave her out on her own again? Look, nobody’s going to find out. I’ll just use up some of my vacation days. I haven’t taken a break from work in years. They won’t know.”

Vanellope is quiet. Too quiet. Ralph can’t tell if the round-eyed look she’s giving him is awestruck or horrified.

Then, she breaks out into a big smile, and all is well again. “You mean it?” she asks, bouncing in her seat.

“Sure thing, kid. Make yourself at home.”

***

Vanellope stays on her best behavior for the entire day.

She isn’t loud or annoying, and she tries not to bother Ralph. The worst thing she does is take thirty minutes to finally settle on a channel when she sits down to watch television.

She ends up watching a lot of television. There was only one TV in her last house, and getting home early enough to both secure a good spot on the couch and the remote before any of the other kids was practically impossible.

But Ralph doesn’t care if she stares at the television until her eyes dry out and her brain rots. In fact, Vanellope is pretty sure that he prefers it. He doesn’t have cable, so there’s only one channel with cartoons, but Vanellope finds that she’s far too old to be entertained by Inspector Gadget. What she does find interest in, however, is a channel that broadcasts NASCAR races.

By dinnertime, all Vanellope wants to talk about is Danica Patrick and Kyle Larson.

That night, she manages to pull herself away from the television long enough to dive into her backpack and grab her Hot Wheels. She turns the volume up on the TV and races her toys around Ralph’s dining area to the race’s live commentary.

Vanellope doesn’t even realize that she’s gotten carried away until she hears the glass shatter. A stab of pain goes up her foot and forces her to stop. Beneath her, she can see shards of glass and ceramic from a bowl that she must’ve knocked over while she was running around.

Little droplets of red fall onto the tile, and it takes Vanellope a whole five seconds to realize that they’re coming from her.

She’s bleeding. Good lord, she’s bleeding. If she were at the foster home, she’d just wrap her foot up in some paper towels and run off, hoping to God that nobody saw her. At least then she could barter for time while her foster parents tried to figure out who did it. But she’s not at the foster home- she’s in Ralph’s house. And Ralph is going to know it was her, because who else could it be?

And then he’s going to think she’s a- a spazzy little freak just like Taffyta said he would and- and-

There’s a groan as Ralph wakes up. Vanellope can see the lamplight from his room leaking into the hallway from the crack under his door.

She doesn’t even grab a paper towel for her foot. She just runs for it.

***

When Ralph drags his feet into the dining area of his trailer, he can just make out the shadow of Vanellope jamming her feet into her shoes. Her backpack is around her shoulders, and she’s got a wild look in her eyes.

“Kid?” Ralph calls out. “What’cha doin’? I heard something fall. You okay?”

Vanellope winces at his voice and shrinks further into the shadows.

“Kid, I see you,” Ralph snaps. “Come out here.”

He almost takes a step forward, but Vanellope screams, “Stop, there’s glass!” before he can even put his foot down.

It’s then that Ralph notices the mess. A layer of broken glass and ceramic shards litter his dining room floor, along with a trail of bloody stains that lead up to where Vanellope is currently standing.

“Kid, what did you do?” Ralph asks.

“I-I’m sorry,” Vanellope stammers. “I screwed up real bad. But I didn’t even mean to, though! It just kinda… happened.”

Ralph wants to yell at her (especially when he notices that the bowl she’d shattered was one that his mother had gotten him when he’d first moved out) but he manages to control his temper. The mess has already been made, and Vanellope looks like a scared animal, and yelling isn’t going to help.

So, Ralph swallows down his anger and feigns nonchalance. “Oh, that? We can fix that, no problem. I break things all the time. Go on, put your things back down. I’ll get the band-aids and the peroxide.”

Vanellope gives him a look. “How are you going to fix a bowl with band-aids?”

“Not the bowl, kid. Your foot. It looks like it’s bleeding pretty bad. We ought to get that cleaned up first.”

***

Peroxide hurts.

Vanellope throws a fit when Ralph holds her ankle over the bathroom sink to pour the alcohol over it. Even if the way the solution bubbles when it reacts with her blood is kind of awesome.

Ralph tells her after he’s done wrapping up her foot in bandages that she can go to bed, but she insists on helping him clean up the mess. She feels guilty about it- especially because he didn’t even get mad at her.

“It’s okay, kid,” Ralph insists as he reluctantly brushes the remains of his ceramic bowl into the trash. “I have more than one bowl, you know.”

“Was that one important to you, though?” Vanellope asks.

Ralph wets a paper towel and wipes down the tile to make sure the smallest of the broken pieces are picked up. “Yeah, it was,” he admits as he tosses out the last of the mess, “My mom got it for me when I was a few years older than you are now.”

“Can’t you ask her to get you another one?”

“Nope.”

“Why?”

Ralph seems to run a few thoughts over in his head before he finally responds. “My mom’s gone, like yours.”

A pit grows in Vanellope’s stomach. “That sucks,” is all she manages to get out. She feels like knocking herself upside the skull as soon as she says it.

She doesn’t want to say sorry, because she knows from experience how absolutely un-helpful apologies are when your parents are dead. Especially when it’s not even the apologizing person’s fault. But looking at Ralph’s disconsolate face, Vanellope kind of understand where the urge comes from. And “that sucks” just sounds cold.

Vanellope suddenly decides that the people who say “sorry” only do it because they’re sorry that they have nothing better to say. 

“Do you ever miss them?” Vanellope blurts out.

Ralph frowns, “Yeah, sometimes I do. But I’m glad that I got to have them for as long as I did. They were good people. Y’know, when I used to break stuff around the house, my mom never cared what I broke as long as I was okay. She’d just clean me off and tell me something about how items can be replaced, but people can’t. Yeah, it’s kind of cheesy, but it was nice to know that I had people who loved me enough to look out for me.”

“Oh,” Vanellope says.

In all her life, she’d never once felt anything but glad that she never got to know her parents. In fact, she often considered it the one blessing she’d ever been given, because it meant that she never had to be sad about having lost them. But for a moment, she wonders what it would be like to have even one memory of her parents to hang on to. She imagines what their voices might’ve sounded like saying her name.

And maybe she starts to understand why Taffyta used to cry so much.

***

Ralph thinks things are over when he and Vanellope finally scrub the last of the blood off the hardwood, but it’s no more than an hour after he sends her to bed that he’s woken up again.

“Kid, what could you possibly want?” Ralph groans. Outside, he hears the hard patter of rain against his bedroom window. A flash of lightning illuminates the black sky.

Vanellope is standing in front of him. She looks embarrassed and rattled, and she has her blanket wrapped around her neck like a cloak.

“I had a bad dream,” Vanellope whispers. “Can I sleep here with you?”

Ralph groans. “Aren’t you a little too old for nightmares?”

Vanellope opens her mouth to speak, “I-,”

At that moment, thunder shakes the world. The storm must be right above them. Vanellope looks like she’s about to burst into tears, but Ralph can see her bite the inside of her cheek to keep her composure. Ralph sighs, setting himself up in bed and flicking the lamp on next to him.

“Go to the kitchen and grab some sodas from the fridge. I’ll turn on the TV.”

Vanellope does as she’s told, and soon, they’re drinking Cokes and watching House Hunters on Ralph’s old box-spring mattress. Ralph lets Vanellope dig her nails into his arm whenever the thunder rolls. She eventually feels safe enough to clock out after two or so episodes, and Ralph makes sure she’s fully asleep before he shuts off his nightstand lamp and mutes the television.

He’s out before his head can even hit the pillow.

***

Vanellope is glad that she doesn’t go to school anymore.

Ever since she ran away, she hasn’t had to show her face anywhere near their little inner-city elementary school. All the better, too, because her teachers never liked her anyways. They’re always yelling at her to sit down and be quiet and to quit biting the other kids.

She doesn’t even learn there. It’s too noisy, and there’s always something more interesting outside the window to distract her from whatever lesson is going on, and all the kids around her are just as bad and disruptive as she is- so by this point in the quarter, the teacher has all but given up.

She just doesn’t understand why she needs school. She survived an entire day on her own in the middle of a big city, and she even made twelve dollars doing it. She’s practically a pro at adulthood even without knowing how to add and subtract fractions or whatever fourth-graders like her were supposed to know.

But apparently, she doesn’t know everything.

It happens during her fourth day at Ralph’s trailer. She’s helping Ralph make TV dinners when Ralph asks her to read the directions on the back of a ready-made spaghetti package.

Vanellope stares at the back of the box and tries her best to sound things out just like she learned how to do in school- but none of the words seem to make any sense at all.

Ralph flicks her. “Come on, kid. Dinner’s not gonna make itself.”

“I’m going, I’m going, don’t rush me,” Vanellope snaps back.

Another full minute passes, and now she’s getting anxious. She’s been making a face at the box for so long, she’s surprised that it hasn’t stuck like that. Ralph doesn’t seem to be at all interested in the dinners anymore. Instead, his eyes are on her.

“Do you not know how to-,”

“I said I’m going! Jeez, you’d think a guy would know some patience,” Vanellope throws her hands up.

Ralph doesn’t say anything else, simply glancing over Vanellope’s shoulder and putting the microwave spaghetti in for three-and-a-half minutes.

***

“She can’t even read, Felix. She told me she was nine,” Ralph says.

They’re sharing a coffee at Felix’s house. He lives a few miles out from the city, but Ralph had been going out in that direction anyways. Felix shifts uncomfortably on his couch.

“Do you think she was lying about how old she was?” Felix asks. “She does look awful small for her age.”

“Shoot, I don’t know. Why would she lie about her age?”

“It’s a doozy,” Felix agrees with a somber nod. “In any case, we all miss you an awful lot down at work. Boss wants to know if you’re coming back anytime soon.”

“I am,” Ralph assures him. “I just- I gotta figure out what to do with the kid while I’m away, you know? I can’t just leave her there on her own for twelve hours.”

Felix pauses. “Ralph, have you still not settled on what you plan to do with her?”

“I’ve thought about it,” Ralph says defensively. “I just about have the answer too, for your information. I just- I need to work out some of the hypotheticals. That’s all.”

Ralph glances down at the bag in his hands. It’s from the bookstore across town, and it’s full of easy-readers. One of the books is a biography on Danica Patrick. It’s full of pictures and simple words, and it’s absolutely perfect for Vanellope.

It feels like a brick in Ralph’s hands now.

“Ralph,” Felix says, sterner this time. “You have to make a decision. Look, I know you like her, but you can’t just keep her.”

“I know,” Ralph admits.

“How about this? We can go to the police station tomorrow and we can talk to someone about it.”

Ralph groans. “They’re not going to understand.”

“They will,” Felix insists. “I have this friend in the force, and she’s amazing. A real dynamite gal. We’ll get in touch with her, and she can help us out. Vanellope will be just fine- I promise.”

“I dunno,” Ralph mutters.

Deep down, Ralph knows why he’s so hesitant. He doesn’t want to leave Vanellope behind. Because he knows that the moment he does, his life is going to go back to the same repeating cycle that it’s been on for nearly fifteen years.

For the first time in a long time, things are different for him. And he really, really likes it.

Because Vanellope looks at Ralph like he’s a good guy. As if he’s helped her build something rather than destroy it.

But despite his personal feelings, Ralph understands where Felix is coming from. And so, he leaves his old friend’s house with the reluctant decision to agree, and drives home feeling like a pit’s grown in his stomach.

Ralph nearly breaks the news right as he walks through the door. He even goes as far as to utter, “Hey, kid, we gotta talk…”

But then he sees Vanellope sitting nicely at his dining table drawing a picture of what looks like a NASCAR racetrack with her glitter pens. And in the stands of her drawing, Ralph can just make out an orange speck with brown scribbles, and a tinier green speck with a black ponytail.

And when Vanellope gives him a look and asks, “what’s wrong?”, Ralph just can’t bring himself to tell her the truth.

“Well, I uh- I was going to surprise you, but I thought, ‘to heck with it!’, you know?” Ralph says. He pulls out the bag of easy-readers and sets them down on the table. “I brought you something. Thought you could, I don’t know, flip through them if you get bored.”

Vanellope’s eyes widen. “These are mine?”

“They’re all yours.”

Vanellope explodes into a burst of excited giggling. “They’re mine, they’re mine, they’re mine!”

She pauses for a moment, suddenly remembering to thank Ralph. She gives him a tight hug and shines brighter than a Christmas tree. Usually, this would make Ralph’s entire week. Instead, it fills his chest with the emotional equivalent to black tar. Ralph has a name for this feeling.

It’s guilt.

***

Vanellope is more than excited for the morning following. Ralph had warned her that he was going out early to pick up Felix and a friend, and he’d told her to just sleep through it.

But as soon as she hears the door click shut behind Ralph, she’s up and in the kitchen. The drawing she did yesterday is hanging up on the fridge now (albeit with a piece of tape because Ralph has yet to own any magnets), and she smiles at it proudly before climbing up to the top cabinets for a box of pancake mix.

She’s going to do something awesome, and Ralph is going to love her for it.

She’d spent the past night begging Ralph to read the book about Danica Patrick to her. He’d pointed at each word as he read it with his finger, and eventually she’d started to follow along with the words herself.

She figured that after a book like that, reading the back of a pancake mix box would be no issue. But when she tries to force herself to read the instructions for the pancake batter, she just can’t get it.

But she’s determined to do this. She is.

***

Ralph dreads the morning following. He had told Vanellope that he was going out early to pick up Felix and a friend, but he didn’t tell her who the friend was.

He didn’t even know who she was himself until just recently.

Her name is Tamora Calhoun. She’s five-foot-eleven, stacked with muscle, and she has the fiercest eyes that Ralph has ever seen. She looks almost comical standing next to little five-foot-one Felix. They arrive at the station by nine to pick Calhoun up from her morning shift.

“You know I don’t work in child services,” Calhoun says as she gets into the passenger seat of Ralph’s truck.

“O-of course, ma’am,” Felix says. He’s stammering red, and he’s smiling like an idiot. “We just- well, we figured that we needed to get some outside help, and you were the only person that came to mind.”

Felix turns to Ralph from the back seat. He looks like an over-excited kid, with his hands on the edges of Ralph and Calhoun’s seat backs. “She’s an investigative officer, you know. The head investigative officer.”

“I served this godforsaken country for seven years,” Calhoun snaps. “I’ve crossed war-torn battlefields that make the darkest parts of this city look like a preschooler’s classroom. I’ve been forced to make decisions that would put any regular man in an asylum. And now I’m being asked to investigate some sniveling little kid.”

“Jeez, take a chill-pill, lady,” Ralph huffs. “We just need some professional advice, that’s all. I mean, I told Felix that I could handle this on my own, but-,”

“Quit wasting time with running your mouth, and give me the details,” Calhoun snaps, pulling a netbook from her computer bag. “Name, age, birthday, appearance- anything you’ve got.”

“Okay, yeah, uh- well, her name’s Vanellope.”

“Just Vanellope?”

“I don’t know her last name. It’s not on any of her things.”

“Fine. Proceed.”

“She’s nine years old. Kind of shrimpy-looking for her age, though. Uh, black hair and hazel eyes. Oh- and she’s also got a scar on her eyebrow because she got into a fight at school once that involved a stapler.”

“Anything else of note?”

Ralph thinks about this for a moment before pursing his lips. “Well, even though she says she’s been enrolled in school since she was five, she can’t read. And uh, her parents… they’re, well-,”

“It’s a situation,” Felix breaks in. “Apparently they passed when she was very young.”

“So, how did you come across a kid like that, Ralph?” Calhoun asks.

“I found her at Tapper’s,” Ralph says, biting his lip. “It was raining outside, and Tapper was going to kick her out because she was a minor. So, I, uh- I kind of pretended to be her uncle? And she’s been at my place since then.”

Calhoun gives Ralph a dirty look, but doesn’t say much else other than, “Alright, then. Let’s get on with this.”

***

Vanellope feels awful. She’d opened up a few windows to let the smoke out, but it doesn’t seem to be doing much to clear the smell of burnt food in Ralph’s house.

She plates all of her black-charred pancakes anyways, and settles them down on the dining table. To pass time as she waits for Ralph to come back, she cracks open the Danica Patrick book, and pushes herself to read the first few sentences. It’s a lot harder to read on her own, but she finds that for the first time in her life, she wants to know what the words on the page mean.

She makes it to the third paragraph before Ralph walks in. Behind him follows Felix, and a tall-looking lady with a pixie cut.

“Phew, kid, this place smells awful. What did you do- rip one?”

Vanellope crosses her arms and frowns. “Are you sure you’re not just smelling your own breath?”

“Hey! Why, I ought to-,”

He shakes his fist at her good-naturedly. Vanellope laughs, bounding over to her kitchen disaster. “Anyways, look! I made pancakes. And I put them all on plates and everything. You want one?”

She sees Ralph nearly gag at the sight, but the big guy just can’t seem to say no to her. He grabs a pancake and takes a mournful bite out of it. It crunches in his mouth like a tortilla chip. He winces, but smiles through it anyways.

“It’s… great, kid. But maybe you shouldn’t use the stove when I’m not around.”

“Okay, okay, yeah, yeah,” Vanellope says. She turns to Felix and the new woman. “Anyways, who’s this?”

“This is off- I mean, Ms. Calhoun. She’s a friend of Felix’s.”

“Hi!” Vanellope greets the woman with a big smile. “Are you Felix’s girlfriend? Why are you taller than he is?”

Felix and Calhoun share a blush up to their ears.

Calhoun is the first to collect her bearings again. “No,” she says, “We’re just professional friends. That’s all. End of story. Now, how about tell me a little bit about yourself?”

***

Calhoun asks all sorts of invasive questions. Ralph watches her out of the corner of his eye as he discreetly tosses the burnt pancakes into the trash and covers them up with paper towels.

Unfortunately, Calhoun doesn’t get a lot of information out of the kid. Not only does Vanellope refuse to sit down for more than ten minutes at a time- her attention is constantly wandering as Calhoun tries to prod her for answers. It’s almost comical to see the officer’s patience being tested as she asks Vanellope for the fourth time what her favorite subject in school is.

After five more minutes of consistent pushing, Calhoun gets her answer.

“I like gym,” Vanellope says.

“What’s your favorite part?”

“Well, Mr. Litwak used to play this game called ‘running’ dodgeball, and that was really fun. You like, run around these cones while kids on another team try to hit you with dodgeballs. It’s the best game ever. My team always used to win because I was the fastest kid in the class.”

“Enlightening,” Calhoun says.

“No problem. NASCAR is on, though, so can I watch that now, please?”

“Go ahead. I’m just going to have a chat with Felix and Ralph.”

Vanellope nods, hardly listening as she’s wrapped up into the world of burning rubber tires and engine growls.

Calhoun takes a seat at the dining room table, pulling out her netbook. “That went well. Took to my questions like a fish to water.”

Ralph twists up his face. “You kidding me? You didn’t get anything from her. You just asked her about school for an hour.”

Calhoun rolls her eyes at him. “Rookies,” she grumbles disdainfully.

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, I caught on pretty quickly that she wasn’t eager to talk about her home life, so I figured that we could go where that information would be available to us. And because she gave me the names of her science and gym teachers, I can search my database to find the elementary school she attends.”

Calhoun pulls out her netbook and types a few search queries in. Within ten minutes, she manages to come across an inner-city school called Felton Technical Institute.

“Come on, ladies,” Calhoun snaps. “We’ve got a school to talk to.”

***

Vanellope throws a tantrum when Ralph asks her to put on her jacket and shoes so that they can go to school. Not only are there less than fifteen laps left in the race she’s watching on TV, the concept of going back to Felton Tech makes her want to gag.

Because Felton Tech is where she gets told that she’s a distraction to the class. It’s where all the teachers tell her to express herself, and then yell at her for drawing pictures with bloody knife-wielding clowns. It’s where the other kids refuse to let her play with them, because they don’t like how she’s always butting into their conversations and finishing their sentences for them.

“I’m not going!” Vanellope says, crawling underneath the coffee table.

“Oh, yes you are, little sister,” Ralph snaps back. He grabs her ankle under the table, and she screams as if he’d just stabbed her.

“Why do we have to go back? I hate that place! I never learn anything there!”

“You’re going back because I say you are,” Ralph says, pulling her out from under the table. She scratches hard into his arms, but he grits his teeth and hangs on through it. “Look, kid, it’s not like we’re going into your classrooms or anything. We just… want to make sure you have everything from your locker.”

Vanellope pauses in her assault of Ralph’s arms to mentally picture her locker. She never got to empty it before she ran away. She knows that it has a few books, a handful of homework assignments, her marker set that she got two Christmases ago, and a stash of candy that she’d gotten from her homeroom teacher for politely shutting up when asked.

Eventually, she relents. “Fine,” she says. “But I won’t like it.”

***

“You’re being a real pain, you know that?” Ralph says.

“I know you are, but what am I?”

Ralph groans. Vanellope’s been antagonizing him for the past hour, and it’s starting to get on his nerves. Despite Felix’s best efforts to contain her, she’s been throwing pennies from his change pocket at the back of his head and complaining loudly about everything.

Thankfully, it isn’t a far drive to Felton Tech. The school is seated in the same district as Tapper’s.

By time they get there, Vanellope had tired herself of her own sulking, and is flipping through the book Ralph had gotten her (Felix had insisted she bring along for the ride. Ralph is damned to say that it was a good call).

Felton Tech looks like every other poorly-managed and underfunded school that Ralph has ever been to. The walls are dreary and nicotine-yellow, and there’s mold and asbestos in the ceilings. Felix, who had the privilege of attending an all-boy’s catholic school, is appalled.

“Golly, Ralph, we should discuss renovating this place,” Felix laughs awkwardly as they trudge through the prison-like halls.

“Yeah,” Ralph laughs humorlessly. “Then we can watch as the price goes up to attend, and the kids who come here every day for a free lunch get kicked out by rich dudes who want to make it a private institution.”

Felix doesn’t have anything optimistic to say to that.

Vanellope takes them to the office upon request. When Ralph leans over the counter, he sees an old, frazzled secretary nursing a thirty-two-ounce thermos of coffee.

“Hi,” he says awkwardly. “We were wondering if we would be able to grab a few things out of a locker?”

The secretary doesn’t ask many questions, and points Ralph in the right direction. Ralph ushers Vanellope out quickly as Felix and Calhoun start to question the lady further. He feels oddly guilty about going behind Vanellope’s back for information, but he needs to get it one way or another.

Vanellope’s locker is on the far-west wing of the school. It’s in a little dead-end hallway around the corner from her fourth-grade classroom.

“Well, go ahead. Open it,” Ralph says.

Vanellope reluctantly agrees, opening the lock and sorting through her things. Her locker looks like a tornado had gone through it- with papers and binders and textbooks all sitting in a haphazard stack nearly as tall as Vanellope herself.

“I saw a trash can a few halls over,” Ralph says. “You want me to get it?”

“Go nuts,” Vanellope says curtly. She’s clearly not over being forced to go back to school, but at least she’s not kicking and screaming anymore.

Ralph heads down to go and get the trashcan. It’s next to where the bathrooms are. It’s then that Ralph remembers that he hasn’t had a chance to take a break since he left to get Felix that morning. By the time he’s zipping up his fly, the bell has been ringing for a solid five seconds, and he can already hear dozens of little feet walking past.

***

As soon as the lunch bell rings, Vanellope feels every bone in her body freeze up. There’s nothing she wants to do more than shove herself into her own locker and hide, but she forces herself to keep calm and continue packing her things into her bookbag.

Maybe their foster mom forgot to pack lunches today. Maybe Vanellope won’t have to see her other ex-foster siblings as they get into their lockers to grab their lunches. Maybe-

“No way,” Candlehead says.

“It’s you!” exclaims Snowanna.

“The spaz,” Jubileena sneers from behind them.

Vanellope hisses under her breath. She puts on a big smile as she stands up to face the other kids. “H-hey guys,” Vanellope says. “Where’s Taffyta?”

“Her new mommy put her in a private school, duh,” Candlehead answers.

“And Rancis is getting adopted now, too. No thanks to you, of course,” Jubileena adds.

Jubileena pushes past Snowanna and Candlehead, brushing her cherry-red bangs to the side of her face. Now that Taffyta’s gone, Jubileena is the oldest of them all. Vanellope wagers a guess that she’s the leader now, too.

“I’m glad for Rancis,” Vanellope says sheepishly. “Where- where is he?”

“He’s at home, obviously,” Snowanna says. “Getting his new daddies to fill out his paperwork.”

“O-oh! Yeah,” Vanellope grins. It’s then that she remembers the Snickers bar in her backpack. She digs it out of her front pocket. “Wait, actually, could you give him this for me? He gave it to me before I left, but I don’t really need it anymore, so-,”

Jubileena snatches the candy right out of Vanellope’s hand. “He gave this to you?”

“Well, yeah-,”

“That is so not fair! Why should he waste his good candy on someone like you?”

Vanellope frowns, furrowing her brow. “Uh, maybe because I didn’t get to have dinner before I ran away, Jubileena.”

“Well, it belongs to me, now,” Jubileena snarls, putting the candy in her coat pocket.

“No, it doesn’t! It belongs to Rancis!”

“Oh, what else is in here?” Candlehead asks, throwing her hands into Vanellope’s bookbag.

Vanellope whips back around. “Don’t go in there!”

Candlehead pulls out what Vanellope had packed from her locker- a marker set, some crayons, a half-done coloring book- and throws them aside. And then she finds the book that Ralph had bought for her. The biography of Danica Patrick.

“Where’d you get this?” Candlehead asks, flapping the book around.

“Hey be careful with that! My friend, Ralph, got it for me.”

“Ralph? What kind of fake name is that? You probably just stole it from the library.”

“Did not! Now give it back!” Vanellope lunges forward for the book, but she’s instantly held back by Snowanna, who wraps her arms around Vanellope’s body and doesn’t let go.

Jubileena smirks as Vanellope wriggles in vain to get out. “Candlehead- the book.”

Candlehead complies like a good crony, passing the book over without hesitation. Jubileena inspects it with a muted interest. “Wow, Vanellope. This Ralph guy must have really trusted you. This is a nice book. Probably cost a lot of money.” She opens it up and flips through it, stopping on a two-page poster of Danica posing in front of one of her cars. “Wow, it would be a real shame if you sp-spazzed-,” at the word, Jubileena rips the page clean in half, “-out on it.”

“Hey, stop it! That’s my book! And I’m not a spaz!” Vanellope says. It’s the worst thing she could’ve possibly done, though, because now the other kids know how to get under her skin.

It’s not long before they catch on to Jubileena’s lead.

_Rip!_

“Whoops, sorry, my hand spazzed!”

 _Rip_!

“Man, I didn’t mean to spaz out like that!”

_Rip!_

“Oh no, I’m sp-sp-spazzing!”

Vanellope begs for them to stop. She cries out for a teacher, or a security guard, or anyone to come and help her. But nobody seems to notice- or worse, they do, and they just don’t care.

It takes the initial shock to wear off, but Vanellope eventually gets the sense to fight back. She leans down and bites down hard on Snowanna’s arm, causing the older girl to yell out in pain and release her. Vanellope lurches forward and yanks on Jubileena’s shoulder.

“What is your problem, Jubileena? I thought we were friends! You gave me your life savings so that I could live on my own. I just- I don’t understand-,”

“Friends?” Jubileena glares at Vanellope, shrugging off the younger girl’s hand. “Look, you little stain, we were never friends. The only reason I gave you those pennies was because I wanted to make sure you stayed gone. Life is so much better at the foster home without you. And I hope that this is a lesson for you to never come back.”

The wind is knocked out of Vanellope as she’s shoved hard to the ground. For a split-second, her senses go numb, and she’s so sure that this is the end- that they’re going to wipe the floor with her once and for all. But then she hears Snowanna scream, and like that, they all scatter.

“That’s right! You get away from her, you little brats!”

***

Ralph can’t believe what he’s seeing when he comes back with the trash can. He can hear Vanellope yelling something as he walks closer, but her voice is drowned out by the rabble of a bunch of other kids talking and laughing about something else.

When he rounds the corner, Ralph sees Vanellope on the ground, surrounded by a gang of kids who can’t be much older than her. Several ripped-up papers litter the floor around her.

Ralph doesn’t hesitate.

“Hey, you!” He roars, rushing towards the gang of kids.

One of them screams, and instantly, they scatter like traitors breaking rank down the halls.

“That’s right! You get away from her, you little brats!” He shouts, waving his fist over his head.

As soon as he’s satisfied, Ralph kneels down next to Vanellope. He helps her off the ground and dusts off her back. “You okay, kid?”

Vanellope squeezes her eyes shut hard and locks her jaw in place. She doesn’t cry. “I’m awesome,” she snaps back.

“Who were those kids?”

“You know. Friends.”

“Why were they being so nasty to you?”

Vanellope shrugs and bites down on her cheek. “They think I’m a spaz,” she says. “It’s stupid, though, because I’m not a spaz. The school nurse just said that I have ADHD or something dumb like that.”

“Hey, kid-,” Ralph trails off. He wants to say that he’s sorry, but he knows that Vanellope will just be mad at him if he does. So, he only sighs and tries his best to smile. “-how about we clean this up and find Felix and Calhoun? I’ll take you to McDonald’s afterwards.”

Vanellope raises a brow and laughs a little, if only just to laugh. “And I can get anything I want?”

“Oh, you rotten little…” Ralph grins and ruffles Vanellope’s hair. “Yeah, kid. Anything you want.”

Vanellope lets out an excited “yes!” before her eyes catch the ripped papers on the floor. Her smile deflates like a popped balloon. It takes Ralph a moment to realize that they belong to the book he’d bought her.

“I’m so sorry, Ralph, Vanellope mutters.

“Why are you sorry? It’s those nasty kids’ faults,” Ralph says, furrowing his brow.

“I-I dunno, it’s just-,” Vanellope picks up a page off the ground and feels it between her fingers. “-this was probably an expensive book, and I shouldn’t have even brought it in and-,”

“Kid, listen,” Ralph says, stopping her. He puts his hands on her shoulders, prompting her to look up at him. “I can buy another book. All I care about is whether or not you’re okay. Got it?”

Vanellope smiles weakly. “Got it.”

***

Vanellope falls asleep on the ride home.

She usually can’t ever fall asleep in cars. She just gets too excited about where the car is going, and how long it’s going to take, and she gets restless being strapped into a seat. But she’s dead tired, and she’s had a long day, and on top of that, the soft murmuring between the adults is something that knocks her right out.

When she sleeps, she dreams about monsters, and thunder, and Snickers bars, and ex-NASCAR racer Danica Patrick being ripped right in half by Jubileena and Candlehead.

She’s glad to be jostled awake by Felix as they’re pulling into the McDonald’s drive-thru. All she wants is two apple pies and a milkshake, but Ralph makes her get a Mighty Kid’s Meal on top of that. He looks a little shaken, but Vanellope can’t understand why. He’s not the one who was just woken up from an awful dream.

“Ralph? Are you okay?” Vanellope asks, her voice hoarse with exhaustion.

“What?” Ralph shakes out of his stupor. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, kid. Just go back to sleep. I’ll wake you up when it’s time to eat.”

Vanellope does just that.

***

Ralph ends up carrying Vanellope into his house. He sets her on the couch while Felix takes out their fast food, and Calhoun types information into her laptop.

With the help of the Felton Tech secretary and Calhoun’s badge, they’d found all the information that they’d needed within the school’s records.

Vanellope is an orphan. Both parents are deceased. She’s nine years old, though her birthday is right around the corner. She has a history of medical notes the school nurse, and was given a soft diagnosis of moderate ADHD and maybe dyslexia. Her last address was at a foster home in the city. The home’s number is listed.

Suddenly, Calhoun is handing Ralph a phone. He feels frozen to the spot.

“You know you’re not the right person to take care of her,” Calhoun says. “Whether or not she liked her foster home, they’ve been parenting for over a decade according to these records. They can give her what she needs. You can’t.”

Felix pats Ralph’s back. “Look, we can get her safely there again by tomorrow afternoon. Then you can head back to work, and we can both get on with our lives. How does that sound, partner?”

Ralph almost tells Felix that he doesn’t want life to go back to the way it was. He likes having Vanellope around. Sure, she causes trouble, and she’s too active for her own good- but she’s a sweet kid. And he’s scared of what might happen to her without him there to make sure that she’s going to be okay.

But he knows Calhoun and Felix have a point. He’s called off of work for an entire week now, and as much as Vanellope thinks his mobile home is awesome- it’s definitely no place to raise a growing kid. He goes against his own instinct to think that maybe the foster home really isn’t that bad. Maybe Vanellope just ran away because she was restless and upset over some trivial thing.

He takes the phone.

He dials the number.

He hopes against all hope that nobody will pick up.

But then he hears a click on the third ring, and a feminine voice answers, “Hello?”

“Uh, yeah, hi,” Ralph says. “My name is, uh- my name is Ralph. Do you by any chance know of a Vanellope Von Schweetz?”

***

Vanellope is awake the instant she’s carried out of the car. She wants to bolt right out of Ralph’s arms and into the kitchen to eat her food, but for some reason, her eyes refuse to open. Ralph sets her down on the couch, and she drifts back into an uneasy sleep.

It’s just as well, because all Felix and Calhoun and Ralph seem to want to do is talk about some boring adult jabber.

Vanellope doesn’t really wake up until she hears her name being said.

“…Von Schweetz?”

That’s Ralph’s voice. Why is he talking like that? Vanellope wants to poke her head over the headrest of the couch and find out, but she holds herself back. Ralph has paused. He’s on the phone with someone.

Ralph clears his throat. “Uh, yeah. I have her. When can I come up?”

Vanellope furrows her brow. A million questions race through her head. She wishes that she could somehow get access to the other half of the conversation, but she makes do with what she has.

“Well, that’s that, then. You’re the house off the fifth, right?”

The house off the fifth.

Vanellope feels every alarm bell in her head go off at once. She knows that house. She was tormented in that house. And she had run away from that house. What on earth was Ralph doing asking about it?

Maybe there’s something he needs there. Maybe he’s just calling because he somehow figured out that she used to live there, and he wants to know if she has any allergies. Maybe he wants to stop by and grab her clothes. Maybe he wants to adopt-

“Great. I’ll drop her off tomorrow morning, then.”

No. Oh, no. She was wrong. She was so, so wrong. He doesn’t want her at all.

He’s taking her back.

***

When Ralph goes to wake Vanellope up for dinner, he’s horrified to find out that she’s already awake.

“You’re taking me back,” Vanellope whispers.

“Vanellope, it’s not-,”

“You’re taking me back, you- you traitor!”

Vanellope jolts up, furious. She has her fists at her sides, and she’s glaring at Ralph with all the hatred she can muster up.

“Hey, look, kid, it’s not like I wanted to do this!” Ralph snaps back. “Listen to me: you belong there, okay? I can’t give you everything you need. They can.”

He goes to put his hand on her shoulder, but she rips away and presses her back to the headrest of the couch.

“No!” Vanellope yells, “No, you can’t take me back, Ralph, you can’t!”

There are tears springing in her eyes. Ralph feels something in his chest squeeze so tightly, he fears for an instant that he’s going into cardiac arrest.

Vanellope never cries. Not when she’s scared to death of thunder, and not when she cuts her foot on glass. Not even when she’s being tortured by a gang of her classmates. But right now, her eyes look glassy and red and so, so vulnerable.

She doesn’t shed a lot of tears. Maybe only a handful before she manages to wipe them away completely. But Ralph sees the wet spot on her hoodie sleeve, and it breaks his heart.

“Kid-,”

“No, Ralph. I-it’s okay,” Vanellope says, settling back down. She laughs, and the sound falls through the air like an iron weight. “I get it. I get it! You don’t want me. That’s it, isn’t it? It’s because I- I screw stuff up, and I can’t sit still, and I broke your bowl, and I burnt the pancakes, and I’m not smart, or well-behaved or… or anything like that.”

“Vanellope?” Felix pipes up. He wrings his hat between his hands. “Look, kiddo, it’s not like Ralph wants to do this. It’s a very complicated adult thing.”

He leans forward to grab her shoulder, but she rips away from him. “Don’t try to make this better,” she pouts. “Like I said, I get it. Why wouldn’t I get it? Who wants me? I’m just a stupid… a stupid spaz.”

“You’re not a spaz,” Ralph snaps.

“Yeah, well then you’re just a real jerk!” Vanellope screams. Her eyes go wide suddenly, and it’s as if she’s been hit. She shrinks back down into her hoodie and avoids Ralph’s gaze. “Look, I don’t care anymore. I’ll… I’ll go back tomorrow if you want me to. It’s fine.”

Ralph hates how disappointed she looks. He hates how she looks like all the people he has to hand eviction notices to. It’s the same thing, in principal. He’s kicking her out of her home, and he’s tearing apart her life at the seams.

Calhoun is the only one collected enough to speak up.

“Come on, little lady. You should still eat.”

It’s the kindest she’s ever sounded. Even Ralph is taken aback by the gentleness in the ex-veteran’s voice.

“Am I allowed to?” Vanellope asks.

“Why wouldn’t you be?”

Vanellope seems to think this over. Then, deciding against whatever stopped her initially, she puts her hands into her hoodie pockets and makes her way to the dining table.

***

Calhoun accompanies Ralph and Vanellope to the foster home.

It seems to be freshly cleaned from top-to-bottom. From the corner of her eye, she catches the small faces of curious children peeking out from behind the furniture. She asks Vanellope if they’re her friends. Vanellope says nothing. The nine-year-old hasn’t said a word all morning.

Vanellope is completely defeated. Calhoun has learned through years of experience that empathy is the enemy, but even she feels a twinge of something for the poor kid. Maybe she’s hanging around Felix too much- he must be rubbing off on her.

He had been quite the gentleman the night before, too. He’d taken her home after they’d eaten and he’d walked her to the door. They’d somehow gotten to talking about Vanellope’s situation, and ended up sitting right there on the porch for a good few hours just talking. And for the first time since her ex-fiancé’s death, Calhoun had felt something kind for another man.

But she’s not going to think about Felix right now. Her job comes first. And she’s off the clock, but something rubbed her the wrong way yesterday, and she’s going to find out if her intuition was correct.

Calhoun walks with Ralph into the foster parents’ office. Both adults look like they’re in the latter half of their middle-ages. The mom has honey-blonde hair, a skinny frame, and angular features. The father is handsome, if not past his prime. They greet Vanellope with the biggest smiles Calhoun has ever seen.

“Sweetie! We missed you so much! You had us so worried,” the mom bursts into tears, rushing forward to hug Vanellope. Vanellope seems hesitant at first, but then her arms cling to her foster mom as any overly-attached child might.

***

Vanellope feels her foster mom’s nails digging into her back. She hears a harsh whisper in her ear.

“Play along, or you’ll be sorry.”

She wraps her arms around the woman without further hesitation.

***

Calhoun watches the display of affection with a stern eye. The foster mom carries Vanellope on her hip, but she’s holding the girl awkwardly, as if she’s struggling to hold even Vanellope’s underweight frame.

“Thank you so much for returning our little girl to us,” the foster mom says. “We don’t know how we can repay you.”

Her husband nods eagerly along with her. “When we found out that she’d run away, we did everything we could to find her again. We paid hundreds to put ads in the daily papers as soon as we knew she had gone missing.”

“You must really care for her,” Ralph mutters. He looks almost as defeated as Vanellope.

“Of course,” the foster mother says. “In fact, we’ll be adopting her as our own now that we finally have her back. We wanted to wait in case another family came around, but after she disappeared, we realized that we just can’t go without her.”

Calhoun glances around the office as Ralph and the foster mom talk. There are a few pieces of paper on the desk, miscellaneous business ledgers and tax reports, but nothing else of interest.

“So, how long have you two been in the business?” Calhoun asks, putting a smile on her face.

“About a decade now,” the foster mother says. “We’ve had lots of kids come in and out. Almost seventy.”

“Does it ever get tricky?”

“With ten plus kids in one house at a time? Absolutely. But we manage. My husband’s an accountant, so he handles all the finances and information.”

“Right,” Calhoun says. “Makes sense.”

“Anyways, we’ve got some new papers to fill out, don’t we dear?” the foster mom asks, pinching Vanellope’s cheeks. Vanellope winces, but does her best to nod and smile along. “Wonderful. Say goodbye to those nice people, will you?”

Vanellope looks between Ralph and Calhoun. There’s a hard look of distrust in her eyes as she grabs harder to her foster mom’s chest. “I don’t think I want to.”

Ralph looks heartbroken. But there’s nothing they can do about it right now. So, they’re shuffled out and head back to Ralph’s truck. As soon as they’re buckled up, Calhoun asks Ralph to drive her to the station. She’s reluctant to admit that she’s gotten emotionally attached to a case, but the thing that was rubbing her wrong earlier is more than evident now.

And she has work to do.

***

The instant the door closes behind Calhoun and Ralph, Vanellope’s foster mom tosses her to the floor.

“Are… are you guys really adopting me?” Vanellope asks.

“Of course, sweetheart,” her foster mom says, voice sickly sweat.

“What- what’s going to happen to all the other kids?” Vanellope asks.

“Well, unfortunately we won’t be able to keep them anymore. But it’s alright. You’re all we need, Vanellope.”

***

Ralph gets the phone call on his lunch break the next day.

“Ralph, when did you say you found Vanellope?”

It’s Calhoun. He can hear typing in the background. The last thing he wants to do right now is think about that kid, but he’s even less eager to argue with her when she sounds this focused.

“About two Sundays ago,” Ralph answers. “Why?”

“I need you at the station. ASAP.”

***

Vanellope groans. Her limps are sore and stiff from her best attempt to sleep comfortably in such a tight space.

None of her foster siblings were particularly happy to have her back. Jubileena and Candlehead had ended up locking her in the closet to teach her a lesson. Despite her begging and pleading that there was a misunderstanding and that she didn’t mean to come back, Jubileena just bangs on the closet door and tells her to shut up.

Vanellope wants more than anything to be mad at them. She even succeeds, for a little. But in the middle of the night, she wakes up to Candlehead sobbing.

It’s Jubileena who gets out of bed and crawls over to the other girl, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“What are we going to do? I don’t want to be sent to a new house again,” Candlehead sobs.

“It’s all because of that stupid inheritance that I heard our foster mom talking about,” Jubileena sneers. “It’s the spaz’s fault.”

“Is it?”

“Duh. Everything was great when she was gone. And then what? She suddenly gets important again because apparently her dead parents left her money or whatever, and now she’s back. And we have to pay because of it.”

Vanellope is hesitant to even move. Inheritance? Money? Those words have never been a part of her life. And hearing these things come out of Jubileena’s mouth just makes the entire concept even more surreal.

Candlehead sniffles, and Vanellope adjusts herself enough to see through the slats of the closet door. She can clearly make out Jubileena’s hand rubbing circles into Candlehead’s back. Eventually, Candlehead seems to get a grip on herself. She wipes her nose and pushes Jubileena away.

“Quit lying. Nothing was better when Vanellope left.”

“Yes, they were! They-,”

“Jubileena.”

At Candlehead’s harsh tone, Jubileena winces. She rubs her own shoulder, wincing as her fingers pass over a fresh bruise. Jubileena squeezes her eyes shut tight and swallows hard.

“Yeah,” she finally relents, “I know.”

Watching her tormentors sob, Vanellope wonders idly if any of the foster kids had ever really hated her, or if they had just needed an easy target to unite against. Something to distract them from their foster parents’ cruelty.

If that was true, was it still wrong for Vanellope to not feel sympathetic for them? Was it okay to resent something even if you understood it?

Vanellope hopes that the answer is yes.

***

Ralph, Calhoun, and Felix arrive at the foster home again at five-thirty in the evening.

They march in there with a manila folder full of incriminating documents tucked neatly under Calhoun’s arm. Calhoun is grinning with confidence as they make their way up the porch steps, but as soon as the foster mom opens the door, the ex-veteran is all business. Stone-faced, she flashes her badge and demands to talk in the office.

“Hello, again. What can I help you with?” the foster mother asks after a moment of pause.

Calhoun smirks. “Quite a bit, in fact. Does the name Gloyd Orangeboar mean anything to you?”

***

Ralph demands the first kid he sees to bring him to Vanellope.

The kid is a small girl with cherry-red hair and a nasty bruise on her arm. “She’s upstairs,” the girl says. “I think she’s still, like, sleeping. She didn’t come to breakfast.”

Ralph doesn’t wait to listen any further. He marches upstairs while Felix examines a utility room down some other hallway.

“Vanellope?” he calls out as soon as he gets to the kids’ room upstairs. “Kid?”

***

Vanellope swears she’s still dreaming when she hears Ralph’s voice calling out for her. It takes a brutal pinch to realize that she isn’t.

“Ralph!” Vanellope jumps up, wincing as her sore arms bang against the door. “Ralph, I’m in here!”

***

The moment Ralph opens the closet door, he’s barreled into by an overactive nine-year-old girl. She hugs him as tightly as she can before seemingly recalling her previous bitterness towards him. She pushes away from him with a glare.

Ralph hopes that she can see the genuineness in his eyes as he pleads for forgiveness. “Look, kid, I’m sorry. I know, I’m a jerk.”

“And?”

There’s a little smirk on Vanellope’s face. It isn’t much, but it gives Ralph the relief he needs. “A doofus.”

“And?”

Ralph rolls his eyes at the girl’s shenanigans. “A stinkbrain.”

“The stinkiest brain of them all,” Vanellope says, wrapping her arms around his neck and hugging him. “You came back,” she whispers.

Ralph wraps his big arms around her and smiles. “I came back,” he assures her. “And we’re going to get you out of here.”

***

At the end of Calhoun’s investigation, the foster parents are arrested on nearly seventy accounts of illegal activity. Calhoun had initially only aimed to get them written off as unfit to take care of children- but then she had discovered Gloyd Orangeboar. The boy had been in the foster parent's care for a small stretch of time several years ago. There had been a scandal on the news about his identity being stolen to purchase things on credit. Calhoun had a gut feeling about the parents' involvement, but she had gotten more than enough proof to convict once Felix had found the milk crates in the utility room. They’d been full of under-the-table receipts and sensitive information about the couple’s ex-foster children.

Apparently, they had been keeping detailed records of each child’s social security number and birthdate, and selling the information off to identity thieves. They’d wait until whatever child they’d been fostering had left, and then sell off their files to the highest bidder on the dark web. It had only been once they had started digging into Vanellope’s personal information did they find out about the inheritance.

Vanellope’s parents had been people of wealth. But with no known living relatives, they decided to entrust many of their assets to Vanellope’s future guardian should something ever happen to them.

The foster parents wouldn’t be getting any of that money. Calhoun had sent in an appeal to void their adoption forms, and it had passed through without a hitch.

And immediately after that, Ralph had put in his own form to adopt.

He had done some research on finally securing a suitable place for a thirty-year-old man and a nine-year-old girl to live (an apartment in the same building as Felix’s), and he had worked hard to provide Vanellope with a home she can grow up in.

He even got her a racecar bed.

Unsurprisingly, she loved it.

***

Vanellope is tired of people telling her that they’re sorry.

“I’m sorry,” they say when they realize her parents are dead. “I’m sorry,” is how they comfort her when she tells them about her ADHD and dyslexia. “I’m sorry” is how they react when she tells them about her nine long years in the foster system, and about the time things got bad enough for her to run away.

“I’m sorry,” is what Tapper said when he tried to kick her out of his bar into the pouring rain. It’s what Felix said when she told him about her parents. It’s what Ralph said when he sent her back to her foster house, and then what he said again when he came back to save her.

But Vanellope doesn’t think people should feel sorry for her.

She has everything she could ever want. She lives in a warm apartment building with Ralph. She never goes to bed without dinner anymore, even if she’s made Ralph mad that day. And she has her own room to herself, with a racecar bed and a shelf to keep her Hot Wheels cars.

She goes to a new school now, and she’s finally learning how to read and do all the things that they never bothered to teach her at Felton Tech. And she gets to see Rancis every day in the halls, because his dads live in the same neighborhood.

Vanellope even gets to be the flower girl at Felix and Calhoun’s wedding six months later.

And most importantly, she gets Ralph. And Ralph gets her.

Sometimes, Vanellope crawls into his bed late at night. She tells him that she had a bad dream (even if she didn’t), and gets them both diet Cokes from the fridge, and they watch House Hunters or the Animal Planet together until they both pass out.

So, Vanellope doesn’t think it’s proper for people to say “I’m sorry” when they hear about what she’s been through. She thinks they should say something much more fitting. Like, “That’s life”, or “I’m glad everything worked out.”

Actually, she likes that one.

“I’m glad everything worked out.”

Yes, Vanellope thinks, that sounds perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
